Ayan Hirsi Ali is right again.

Why adolescence lasts forever.  I shudder at the mere thought.

Non-conspicuous consumption? The new “it thing”? I shudder at this too.

When women speak up 1 and 2.

This is kind of good to know. Why democracies fail.

Universal income? In so many regards, a resounding yes. Others? Not sure.

Gwyneth again. This makes me puke, not shudder.

Sandra Bland. How scared she must have been. How brave she was. The printout of her arrest show so clearly the ludicrousness, the complete and utter wrongness of her arrest, her death.

Meanwhile, in Sweden… one discussion is never ending. The decision of the Swedish Academy to officially remove the old, tasteless, needless word negerboll from the official Swedish dictionary is causing a minor uproar. The word was used to mean a Swedish pastry like chocolate desert/candy. It is a round, chocolatey tasty desert that is especially popular with kids. Of course its name must be changed. Naturally. Needless to say. One would presume any modern being would agree. But not so. Puny and insipid and self-centered, obnoxious, even in the face of reason, even in response to patient explanations.

Back in the USA. 204 days in 2015 have passed so far. 204 shootings have taken place. When will Americans see the light? President Obama is frustrated by his inability to attain (any sane level) gun control: “It is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings.”

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This is what I think you should read from last week, so that you know what’s up, and what is definitely not.

Fear mongering is on the rise, again. GMOs why do people fear them so? Where is the scientific basis? And Organic farming, who says it is all good? It may be, it may not be, but please do not accept it blindly. Because, you know, kale is not all that. Neither are fish oil pills, but we already knew that, right?

On the subject of “health”, Cross Fit, ever heard of it? I hadn’t, but everyone else has apparently. I call it crazy, but maybe that’s just me? I take my exercise in the form of leisurely strolls and really do not get the yearning for bodily perfection.

I miss the west coast and San Francisco, but sometimes not. I  felt a small earthquake in 2008 whilst living in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. It was a surreal experience. I do not want to feel the real deal.

The diverse Internet, the Internet we must save?

In order to cut down on our kids screen time, we must cut down our own. Like that is going to happen. We are all to vested, and it is taking a toll on our kids, it really is.

If you have recently been rejected, don’t worry to much. Things can turn around.

I just bought Hanna Gadbans book, Min Jhad (My Jihad). It will be an interesting read. The book has already led to a pie throwing contest. What can we, and can we not say about Islam?

This has made the rounds over the years. Somehow I think many people didn’t really get it then, and they probably won’t now either. But for the rest of us, let’s shut down the computers and go play Yatzie with our kids! Yatzie is seriously underrated, btw, as is Backgammon, Uno, Memory….

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80 people together are as rich as half the world’s population. Another way of looking at it: 20 percent of the worlds population hold 94.5% of its wealth. That means that 80% get to split the ‘whole’ rest. Now isn’t that a charmer?

You know what? I don’t want to be a slave to a 9-to-5 schedule. I want to create my life so that I have more freedom to be able to travel the world, and work and live wherever I want,” says Evita Robinson, 30, the creator of Nomadness Travel Tribe in a feature called ‘Inside the new Black Travel Movement’. I couldn’t agree more.

Nothing to fear, but fear itself, right? How did we turn into such fearful parents? And what do we do when some parents try to not be fearful? they get investigated. Free Range kids, at first glance it strikes me as a very American thing, yet it resonates in more places than one.

One woman feels no fear at all.

Speaking of fear, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop sounds fun. Not. Just really, really pretentious.

The teenage birth rate is declining, but noone seems to know why. It is of course good, reat news, but how can we keep it up if we don’t know what is causing it?

No wonder girls can’t be happy with their bodies, the ideal looks keeps changing.

Stop wasting time on your phone or tablet. Most of what you’re checking can wait until later anyways and most of it is completely useless garbage. Yet we keep staring, transfixed. One family of two adults and 2 kids (maybe 5 and 10 yeras old) spent their vacation at the same hotel we were staying in. Over the course of an entire week, not once during breakfast, lunch or dinner, did any of the four stop staring at their respective screens. There wass no conversation, to chit chat, just glaring screens. charing, I am sure. Yet our family, couldn’t stop staring at that family….

Another charmer, being a Frontist, or member of the French right wing party is apparently no longer shameful and it doesn’t need to be hid. Now a days Marine Le Pen gets an op ed in the NY Times, just like that, with no mention of the fact that she is the leader of France’s right, wing, fascist, racist party. Then again, 34% of the French agree with her ideas. Yay France.